Shedding new light on our love affair with chairs

Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute

The Rise & Recharge national campaign reignited a slow-burning health issue that had lost its spark in the public consciousness: the countless hours many of us spend sitting motionless in work every day.

The campaign combined online advertising, earned media coverage and a workplace engagement program to promote a healthier balance between sitting and being active at work, supported by a free health app to encourage regular time away from the chair.

Research from Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute showed that spending hours sitting every day increases our risk of developing diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Fenton was asked to develop a campaign to warn of the risks and offer practical advice for changing workplace norms that often equate time in the chair with being productive.

We created the Rise & Recharge name and brand, and developed the concept of becoming a chair-boss through increased chair-awareness. Using the campaign app to monitor time spent sitting and schedule regular breaks, workplaces were asked to empower employees to become the boss of their chairs.

We paired research with tips for getting muscles moving while still getting things done at work. (We even created a range of special ‘workplace moves’ for committed chair bosses.)

We worked with Baker IDI to engage large companies whose workforce are deskbound for much of the day, and supplied culture change kits with posters, factsheets, and content for a variety of social media platforms.

Fenton commissioned new qualitative research to strengthen the campaign evidence base and generate media interest in a topic often seen as old news. We were able to show a low awareness of the risks of prolonged sitting compared with other widely recognised unhealthy habbits and achieved national coverage across print, online and radio.

Over the four-week campaign period several large workplaces agreed to participate, online ads and shared content led to hundreds of likes and hundreds of thousands of views, and the Rise & Recharge app was downloaded more than 3,800 times, exceeding campaign targets.